Books by Francoise Sagan

When BONJOUR TRISTESSE was published in 1954, Francoise Sagan was only eighteen. The book became an international bestseller and launched Sagan to literary fame. Set on the French Riviera, the novella's protagonist is a teenage girl Cecile who lives a carefree and pleasurable existence with her widowed libertine father Raymond. As the book opens, her father is cavorting with another young ingénue, the pretty but simple Elsa, but as the summer progresses, he falls in love and becomes engaged with an older elegant woman, Anne Larson. At first Cecile dotes on the cultured and beautiful Anne, but slowly begins to feel that she is a threat to her freedom, and devises a plot to bring her father's marriage to an end. Full of youthful vitality, sexual energy, and tragedy, BONJOUR TRISTESSE is a gem of a novel that perfectly captures that tentative moment as the values of the 1950s felt the first tremors of a cultural revolution.

The distinguished French author shares her favorite memories of Sartre, Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, Orson Welles, Rudolf Nureyev, and other people and places that have played an important role in her life.

Taking the form of letters to herself, this fictionalized autobiography of the great actress reveals Bernhardt's views on careers, children, money, her life, and love.

Traces the history of construction of the Eiffel Tower, and shows the tower from various vantage points in Paris.

Fleeing the 1940 Nazi invasion of France, four arrogant Parisian aristocrats--a homosexual diplomat, an elderly and obese dowager, a society wife, and her gigolo lover--seek refuge at a peasant's farm.

A group of hedonistic passengers enjoy nightly musical entertainments and their own impromptu activities on a Mediterranean cruise aboard a luxury yacht.

In occupied France, a young divorcee and her lover, the head of a Resistance network, choose the country home of the lover's childhood friend as a cover for their political activities.

The lives of a boardinghouse keeper and a factory accountant are transformed when the accountant turns up a cache of stolen jewels, which enables the couple to live out their dreams.

Flora de Margelasse, an aristocratic beauty, shatters all social propriety when, on her return to her family's chateau in France, she falls hopelessly in love with a celebrated peasant poet.